I am reminded of Willian Jennings Bryan, who in his old age advocated for the eight-hour work day, a minimum wage, the right of unions to strike, women’s suffrage, and then Alcohol Prohibition and of course Anti-Evolution.
Even the most progressive will turn to “I am old and don’t like new ideas!” as they age.
I’m seeing that in some of my older friends. Some of them can be manually taught new ideas, but it gets tiring. Well, they still vote for the most progressive option on any ballot, so I’m not bothering with it anymore.
I’m getting older and get weird looks when I tell people I refuse to install apps that can be websites and if a company is going to force me to use their app I am simply not spending money there.
Returning my Norelco shaver and Beats headphones I received for Christmas this year because I don’t need an app for headphones and sure as fuck do not need an app for my shaver!I’m talking more about political prospectives. Your example is about privacy concerns and superficial tech advances, which I’ve never really seen a strong generational bias.
Well, I guess the trash took itself out.
Whenever I see some educated individual trying to make some sort of ‘credible’ stance against trans rights I just see an overgrown child.
These are grown adults who are angry that the simplistic worldview that they were taught as children doesn’t hold up to reality.
It was challenged by the mere existence of people who are different than themselves and they don’t want to confront the possibility that they were wrong(the people they care about were also wrong), so they the blame trans people for evoking those emotions instead of doing some introspection.
Do you really think that’s all there is to it? Don’t you think your worldview is a bit too simplistic? The one that gets the last word isn’t always that one who is right you know.
I first wanted to ask why the atheism foundation supports any religion at all… then I read the article, then I saw the ’ '… what an asshat.
Something about doors and arses.
He lost all credibility and relevance when he piled into the bigotry clown car. Atheism doesn’t have saints.
Dawkin’s quote:
Prof Dawkins described publishing Grant’s “silly and unscientific” article as a “minor error of judgment”, but that the decision to remove Prof Coyne’s rebuttal was “an act of unseemly panic”.
He continued: “Moreover, to summarily take it down without even informing the author of your intention was an act of lamentable discourtesy to a member of your own advisory board. A board which I now leave with regret.”
He was/is upset about pulling an article and that’s why he resigned.
And the person whose article was pulled also has a point:
That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide,” he wrote in an email. “I was simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that ‘distressing’ and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do.”
“The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.”
Both of their issues was the article elaborating Coyne’s position was yanked.
This is a pedantic miscommunication issue, which is pretty much their point.
Instead of discussing the issue and coming to an understanding, discussion is immediately shut down.
That’s why they’re resigning and it’s valid.
I would buy that if Dawkins didn’t have a history of making bigoted statements about trans people.
He literally lost a Humanist of the Year award because of it a few years ago
He may have other motives and may be a total dirt hat, but I’m the spirit of pedantic disagreement, the argument given still holds water.
It’s valid to get mad at the article being removed and not discussed. But I have to say, that argument calling “gender ideology” a religion and its justification reads exactly as a right-wing anti-woke argument calling science a religion. Or the way I like to translate it, “everything I don’t like is X” syndrome. Be it woke, religion, or anything else. It’s a blatant display of rigid thinking. Just because someone didn’t intent to hurt doesn’t mean their actions can’t hurt, and that’s a big part of critical feminist theory (of which they might not entirely understand much about). Our actions and words have material and social consequences that extend beyond our intentions. Maybe try to understand why they were injurious instead of throwing a performative tantrum.
The problem here i think is “we remove this article because people got upset” this behaviour is basically the same as “we remove this article because (religious) people got upset”
People in the comment seems to have issue with the person or the article, but that not the problem. The person can be the worst, and the article could be written by chatgpt, but at the end should not be taken down unless it violate the website or publishing terms and condition if any.
He’s 83 and can’t handle the changing world, he can go spend his last years alone like every old asshole does.
Can we have a transgender religion though? Not to encompass the trans rights movement but to support it. Make memes religious art and Blåhaj a figure of worship. Girls’/boys’ nights, enby sleepovers etc. could be classified as gender-affirming rituals. Use constitutional protection of religious expression to support free gender expression. Medication and procedures would of course be sacred too. Members would be required to maintain a support network for all trans folk (including non-members).
the last thing we need is another religion. All that’s required in this case is basic human decency, which religions have been appallingly bad at delivering.
It would not be a religion in a traditional sense, just a way to wrap existing ideas to exploit the legal protection of religion. The “rituals” are whatever members would be inclined to do anyway and fits the spirit.
Anyway, you’re probably right that it would be a bad idea in the long term. Every major religion has been abused by people from within or outside and I can’t think of effective safeguards for this one.
Reading that article and this comment thread just makes me want to endlessly reiterate the point that if you don’t intimately understand the difference between gender and sex then you aren’t qualified to claim scientific opinion on either.
Defining terms is absolutely crucial to any kind of meaningful debate including science. Cultural anthropologists find the idea of social gender and biological sex being the same concept to be genuinely laughable. Whether or not you dogmatically think they ought to be the same or not, they are historically obviously not and if you mix and match which you are talking about in an argument then your argument will not be productive or make sense.
Even according to Dawkins definition of sex, there are only two, which is scientifically inaccurate. He’s a fucking esteemed biologist and should know the difference between binary and bimodal.
“Boo! Hiss! Protect the citadel!”
-United Atheist Alliance
(I’m mocking dogmatic pop sci types, not attempting to denigrate trans rights or identities)
My opinion of anti-theists in general is that they’re like “fat hate”, just basic bigots who think they found a loophole. In anti-theist spaces for example, Islamophobia isn’t tolerated, it’s enforced.
Dawkins was always a public bigot. It’s no wonder he talks just like American conservative Christian, he’s been in bed with them for years.
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Steven Pinker also resigned for the same reason. I had picked up one of his books at an airport. The man is insufferable.
I read like 2 chapters of rationality and had to stop after 2 chapters. It read like one of those pick mes in school who were smart enough to string together a smart sounding sentence but super insecure about themselves so played up this intellectual persona as much as they could.
Why would he call it a religion? Is it just bitterness over getting disagreed with?
I can probably help you understand, but the article does a better job…
Dawkins is a zionist
Dawkins schtick was pretending he was not racist but hated Islam. Turns out the man is simply racist.
Same with Sam Harris.
Richard “Culturally Christian” Dawkins can go meme himself out of the meme pool.
I get, given how right wing, nasty, anti women and anti LGBTQ+ the American church is, why you would want to put Richard Dawkins, who is so nasty and anti trans (probably among other things) into the same bucket, but he’s British, not American, and famously very firmly anti-religion.
He has always been a dick, whatever he was trying to convince people of, and it’s no surprise he continues to be a dick in his old age. It doesn’t mean he’s a Christian. He’s really, really, really not.
“Culturally Christian” is not the same as “Christian“. The man clearly holds on to many of the perspectives he picked up being raised Anglican.
I’m one of those too, not all that voluntarily. I carry a lot of unconscious baggage left over from being raised Catholic. Not all of it is bad: there’s a tradition of critical thinking and cultural engagement that is positive. But I occasionally still get twinges of guilt about things that are not in my control, or that are not things to be guilty about in the first place.
Some context for you: https://skepchick.org/2024/04/richard-dawkins-cultural-christian-or-supremacist-bigot/
Surplus extra-topical context: https://religiondispatches.org/norway-massacre-suspect-anders-behring-breivik-hitler-the-jerusalem-post-editorial/ (you can find his manifesto online)
OK, the first article points out that he has a lot in common with the American right wing churches in that they don’t actually believe a word of it and just use it as a cultural sheild for their hatred, which is a fair point.
The second one doesn’t seem as related.
The second one is about how far [right] “Culturally Christian” can go.
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Since some people are getting a paywall I’ll post the article text here:
Richard Dawkins has resigned from an atheism foundation over its “imposition” of a “new religion” of transgenderism.
Prof Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist, stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after it censored an article supporting the belief that gender is biological.
Prof Dawkins accused the group of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after it deleted the article from its website, saying it was a “mistake” to have published it.
His resignation followed that of two other scientists, Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, who accused the foundation of imposing an ideology with the “dogma, blasphemy, and heretics” of a religion.
The scientists’ resignations come after FFRF’s Freethought Now! website published a piece last month by Kat Grant, entitled “What is a Woman?”, which argued that “any attempt to define womanhood on biological terms is inadequate” and that “a woman is whoever she says she is”.
In response to the piece, Prof Coyne, a fellow board member and biologist, wrote an article last week called “Biology is not Bigotry”, in which he defended “the biological definition of ‘woman’ based on gamete type” – or reproductive cells.
However, FFRF later pulled the article after a backlash and released a lengthy statement apologising for the “distress” it had caused.
“Despite our best efforts to champion reason and equality, mistakes can happen, and this incident is a reminder of the importance of constant reflection and growth,” co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote.
“Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values and principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again.”
‘Quasi-religious’ ideology
Following the atheist foundation’s decision to unpublish his article, Prof Coyne accused the group of peddling a “quasi-religious” ideology.
“That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide,” he wrote in an email. “I was simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that ‘distressing’ and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do.”
“The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.”
Prof Pinker, the US-Canadian psychologist, announced his resignation from the board by lamenting that the FFRF was “no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics”.
Prof Dawkins described publishing Grant’s “silly and unscientific” article as a “minor error of judgment”, but that the decision to remove Prof Coyne’s rebuttal was “an act of unseemly panic”.
He continued: “Moreover, to summarily take it down without even informing the author of your intention was an act of lamentable discourtesy to a member of your own advisory board. A board which I now leave with regret.”
Grant is a non-binary author and fellow at the FFRF, focusing on state versus Church issues that specifically impact the LGBTQ-plus community.
In their November article, Grant argued a woman cannot be defined as someone with a vagina, uterus or the ability to conceive, as this would exclude intersex people, women who have hysterectomies and those who have gone through menopause.
Grant claimed using biology to define female identity is “inadequate” and alleged that the views of groups who have fought against gender ideology “disregard both medical science and lived experience”.
‘New definition of woman’
In his response to Grant’s article, Prof Coyne accused the author of attempting “to force ideology onto nature” in order to “concoct a new definition of ‘woman’”.
“Why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality,” he wrote. “Instead, in biology ‘sex’ is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells.
“It is not ‘transphobic’ to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights.”
Founded in 1976, the FFRF is a US non-profit that promotes the separation of church and state.
Ms Laurie Gaylor, the FFRF president, said: “We have had the greatest respect for Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, and are grateful that they sat on our honorary board for so many years.
“We do not feel that support for LGBTQ rights against the religious backlash in the United States is mission creep. This growing difference of opinion probably made such a parting inevitable.”
People giving a biological stance against transgender women don’t even make sense because there are many supporting pieces of biological evidence which show that gender exists on a spectrum.
Indeed, a woman is whoever says they’re a woman, and it’s very likely that their choice is biologically driven. I know some people might not like a comment like this because it’s “trans med”, and I get the impulse to shoot down comments like this out of fear of being exclusionary, but if you really think about it this doesn’t exclude any known or unknown gender or identity.
He’s right, but religion is pretty natural for humans. Any kind of divorce between religion and core ideals of the society lasts only as long as the cultural movement behind that divorce doesn’t create its own religion. Because the majority of humans are not independent thinking and not rational, even if they are part of a crowd united by stated belief in independent thinking and rationalism.
That’s why ideologies can be divided into “creating a resilient structure of society, because apes will be apes” and “fixing the apes to be better humans”, and the latter kind always fails. Interestingly enough, this division is orthogonal both to right\left and to libertarian\authoritarian categories.
My point was - a person may identify as whatever they want, but they were, in the vast majority of cases, born clearly a man or clearly a woman.
I don’t think he’s against that identity. But to reject reality of nature because of self-identification and to try to impose that upon popular scientific discourses is a religion indeed, just sort of a protest against religious mainstream, not much different from East Roman iconoclasm or Jewish hassidic movements.
Or Christianity itself the way it conquered the old religions in the east Mediterranean, especially Egypt. Egyptian ancient religion from that age was very complex and well-canonized, and with apparently most people just as full of it as today of Christianity. While early Christianity in Egypt was a compact, simple and beautiful set of abstract beliefs ; in some sense Christianity of that time was less magical and allegorical than old religions, but at the same time claimed that its smaller miracles were true.
So he is complaining about the quasi religious zealotry that permeates the ideology as, he himself is anti religion, and resigned of the place because it is now peddling to what is basically a new religion
Makes total sense actually
But there’s nothing religious or dogmatic about what the FFRF did. Dawkins is just framing it that way because it’s how he became popular.
He’s just an asshole who constantly acts like an asshole, and people are done with his shit, so he’s having a little fit on his way out the door.
If anyone is acting “religiously” here, it’s Dawkins, who constantly lies and misrepresents medical science because it doesn’t match up the beliefs he grew up with.
Rejecting science (biology in this case) is one major component of religion. Others are dogma (a set of principles that are taken as axioms and never contested, eg gender can be whatever you want it to be), heresy (eg offering a scientific view that differs from dogma, like the fact that biology presents two genders), censorship and apostasy (removing such an article for disagreeing with the dogma, regardless of scientific facts).
Seems to me like Dawkins slightly overreacted, but it’s understandable because he did so based on the religious-like fervor exhibited by those who would remove an article published by a biologist, debating biological classification, because they disagree with its implications.
For all the talk about the unscientific right, it seems to me like the left ignores science just as much when it’s not what they want to hear - what their group has already agreed to be true. This video comes to mind: https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno
All your premises are wrong. The existence of trans people doesn’t reject biology, quite the contrary, advanced biology supports the notion that sex can vary beyond a binary and is quite distinct from gender and sexual identity (which are psychosocial phenomena). There is no organized dogma on the LGBTQ+ support community. If anything, in fighting, disagreement and diversity is what defines it, not homogeneity or conformity. Our understanding of sexual identities, gender and transexuality is the result of scientific discourse, through and through. From phenomenological descriptions, to anthropological, sociological, psychological and biological study. Our theories and understanding of transexual individuals has changed radically as new evidence has come forth and discoveries and theories evolve around it. It is quite the opposite of dogma. On heresy, there’s only one thing that is considered universally bad, and is the idea that a group of people has to die due to something they can’t control and aren’t at fault for. Like declaring murder against trans people for being born transgender, yes, that’s a definitive faux pas and you will be ostracized for wanting minorities dead. This is a moral stance, but that’s it, it doesn’t imply adhesion to any organized enforcement of belief. There’s also no censorship or apostasy in here. The concept of censorship doesn’t apply as the FFRF is not a government. Coyne is perfectly allowed to publish his ideas somewhere else, just not there. Finally, apostasy doesn’t apply because this is not an organized religion.
The thing here is that Coyne and Dawkins want to declare themselves apostles of their anti-religion movement. Because that’s how they were raised and they lack the critical thinking skills to realize the irony of the situation they’re in. They are uncritically defending Anglican religious values and objectively acting against the anti-religion they claimed to champion. They’re exactly the kind of asshats they would’ve debated against 10 or 20 years ago.
censorship does not require a government and it does apply
Like declaring murder against trans people for being born transgender
was dawkins suggesting this in his opinion piece and if not then why remove it
Who is rejecting biology?
Other than Dawkins I mean?
It seems like you’re confused between sex and gender?
Gender is a synonim for sex. It is also used when speaking about words - in some languages, words have a gender.
That’s stupid.
Gender and sex are not exactly the same thing, and you have to be purposefully obtuse to ignore the entire context of the conversation. I won’t entertain your faux ignorance. You’ve had multiple people correct you on this, and you haven’t responded to any of them, because you know you’re not up to the task.
If you say sex=gender, you are factually incorrect. Try again. If they were exactly synonymous, then words would also have a sex. Tell me where “telephone’s” genitalia are.
I know gender and sex aren’t the same thing. You could tell that because I provided two meanings for gender, only one of which was sex. Your problem seems to be I don’t accept your definition of gender.
But this isn’t really your problem, because it’s not your definition. Instead, it’s a newer definition that’s been tacked onto the word, that you have accepted and propagated, and now are jumping on others for not doing the same. I ‘d be lying if I said I don’t understand why you’d want to change the meaning, to make it something else. It’s a good word for you. It’s a word that is already known, so it’s in the collective mindset. A new word would be harder to get ‘out there’, while another (weaker - lesser used) word wouldn’t generate as much buzz and discussion when you misuse it. It’s a cunning thing to do. It’s also unacceptable and vile. If we’re changing words’ meanings, then you’re welcome to find out
That’s stupid.
Has in the meanwhile been changed to mean “I concede that I am in the wrong regarding this matter and will take myself out of the conversation for future replies”.
To reinforce this change in meaning, I’ll be blocking you now. Have a good rest of the day.
I’m old and trying to keep up with the times, remind me; what is the difference between transsexual and transgender? It seems like the word, transsexual, I haven’t heard in a longass time.
“Transsexual” is kind of being phased out in favor of “Transgender,” I believe.
heresy (eg offering a scientific view that differs from dogma, like the fact that biology presents two genders)
I often find – and such appears to be the case here – that when people make these arguments that they either do not know the difference between sex and gender, or are feigning ignorance.
Sex is not binary, and the “anti-trans” folks pretend that it is. Intersex people exist.
Gender is not solely biological.
I agree. And censorship is not the way. I’d only criticize that it goes both ways, as he seems to disregard the hypotheses that support transgender views with equal dogmatism or lack of rigor.
